Beltway Spin Podcasts

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Why The Generic Ballot Question?

In case you might have been out of the US the last several months, the generic ballot question in polling surveys has been frequently talked about on cable news. But is it really a valid question to ask poll respondents to begin with? Generic ballot simply means there are no specific candidates. Have you ever voted in any election where there was no specific candidates? Whether the election is local, state, or national, there are always specific candidates one must vote for 100% of the time. When this question has been asked previously about "Should President Obama be re-elected?" or "Who would you vote for: President Obama or Governor Palin?" You generally would get entirely different responses based upon which question was asked of respondents. So why ask this question to begin with?

My answer is it gives the "inside the beltway" media types more meaningless "stuff" to talk about for endless hours (a horse race type of story,whose up whose down) instead of covering real issues in America that actually are affecting our daily lives. It seems this generation of television news anchors seems to thrive on meaningless things.

What are the facts?

Beltway Spin Of The Day

Subject: President Obama's three-year gradual withdrawal plan for troops from the Afghanistan War. Some in the media apparently believe that a three-year gradual withdrawal through 2014 is just too fast a withdrawal. Here are a few examples of this meme.

"Why didn't Obama listen to Patraeus?"-CNN-David Gergen; "Since the President is rushing the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan"-Good Morning America-George Stephanoupolis.

Political Shout Of The Day

Subject:Minnesota Governor, Mark Dayton, is ready to end the state shutdown. The state government was shutdown two weeks ago when the Democractic Governor and the GOP lead state legislator could not reach a budget agreement. Dayton moved to end the shutdown today by accepting the GOP proposal that would delay school funding and borrow against future revenues to close its $1.4 billion dollar budget shortfall. In exchange, the GOP legislature must drop demand to cut 15% of the Minnesota state work-force.

"Minnesota residents should start the process of recalling the Republicans who are willing to shut down the government to still give more to the wealthiest Americans."

"Republicans have gone completely nuts snce President Obama took office why is that?"